Contribution to Book
No Title
The Idea of a Political Liberalism
(2000)
Abstract
The publication of this volume marks (approximately) the thirtieth anniversary
of the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of justice ( 1971; hereafter
referred to as Theory or TJ). By any account, the appearance of Theory was a
turning point for political philosophy. Many observers felt that the entire
field was in decline in the 1950s and 1960s (Barry 1996). In 1956, Peter
Laslett famously announced that "political philosophy is dead," and Isaiah
Berlin once said that he decided to pursue scholarship in intellectual history
because he became convinced that philosophy had nothing more to offer to
politics. Some people have described this sense of decline in political theory
as a field as a gap in the literature: Richard Tuck (1995) notes "the absence of
major works of political philosophy of a more or less familiar kind, berween
Sidgwick and Rawls."1 Whatever the cause of this perceived gap, the appearance
of Theory could not have been more cataclysmic in its effect on the field.
Disciplines
Publication Date
2000
Editor
V. Davion and C. Wolf
Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield
Publisher Statement
Reproduced with permission of Rowman & Littlefield.
Citation Information
Victoria Davion and Clark Wolf. "No Title" LexingtonThe Idea of a Political Liberalism (2000) p. 1 - 15 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/clark-wolf/4/